The sound of silence

After 10-week tour, Duluth band Low finds a quiet audience reassuring

V. Paul Virtucio, Duluth News-Tribune. May 4, 2001

Imagine 600 people crammed into a dark theater with their eyes glued to a trio on stage. While the band's slow musical meanderings fill the hall, the audience is silent.

For the Duluth band Low, that silence is a sign they're playing a good concert.

"I find it more powerful than loud cheering after a song. The fact that everybody is in tune to what's being played is probably more reassuring than anything," said Low's frontman, Alan Sparhawk, 32.

Sparhawk, drummer Mimi Parker and bassist Zak Sally just returned from a 10-week tour of 22 North American and 18 European cities. The trio will soon head out for two May concerts in Tokyo, the group's first shows in Asia.

While in Duluth, the slo-core, speed-challenged trio will do something else it's never done before: Perform at this weekend's Homegrown Music Festival. Low opens the festival at 8 p.m. today in the NorShor Theatre, 211 E. Superior St.

Seven years after forming the band, Sparhawk said he is dumbstruck by how well Low is doing commercially. Its fifth and latest CD, "Things We Lost in the Fire," held the top spot in the CMJ college radio music charts for four weeks this winter. Record sales and ticket sales on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are reaching new highs, he said.

During the recent tour, the band played to larger audiences, including 1,400 fans in London.

Gigging in countries where people might not have seen Low perform before isn't Sparhawk's greatest concern. It's being taken out of mid-sized venues and intimate coffeehouses and set up under somebody else's light cues and sound control that sets him ill at ease.

"When you're dealing with an audience you can't see in front of your face and can't feel their breath on you, you have to surrender a little bit and say 'I can't look every person in the eye in this audience so we'll just have to do the best that we can,'" Sparhawk said.

Low found a distributor in Japan to market the band's albums and was recently invited to perform there.

"We've heard enough stories from friends that (in Japan) it's kind of a somber crowd. They're very excited but they don't show it. It's kind of like playing Canada. Well, it's like Sweden or Norway actually," Sparhawk said.

After Japan and one more concert in Minneapolis, Low will slow things down a bit. Parker, Sally and Sparhawk have a handful of songs written. Although they've experimented with a pop-like sound — especially with their latest CD — they'll probably return to their sparse, slow harmonies for their next project.

"Now we're flying blind. I have no idea what this is all about," Sparhawk said. "I didn't think many people would be into what we do."